Slovan Bratislava had the rare loss at the hands of an Empty Attacker goal as they tried desperately to win in regulation to keep their Nadezhda Cup hopes alive. However, Alexei Kaluzhny's goal with 12 seconds left in regulation gave Dinamo Minsk the victory. Ex-NHLer Miroslav Satan scored Bratislava's goal, their lone tally of the two game Qualification Round pairing against Minsk. Minsk moves on to play Mytischi in the next round while Bratislava is done.

Jaroslav Janus sat backup today for Bratislava's 1-0 Nadezhda Cup opening loss to Minsk. The Nadezhda Cup is sort of a mini "best of the worst" tournament for KHL clubs that don't make the postseason. Slovan managed just 16 shots on goal in the tight-checking defeat.

The day also saw the start of the KHL Eastern Conference playoffs with 4 games, none of which featured Lightning prospects. Magnitogorsk (Koshechkin) and Ufa (Vasilevskiy) will begin their KHL Western Conference playoff runs tomorrow while Khanty-Mansiysk (Gusev) will get their first kick at the can in the Nadezhda Cup.

Nikita Gusev capped his first full season at the KHL level with a game winning, power play goal to lift Yugra to a 2-1 upset win over SKA St. Petersburg. Gusev played 11:24 in the match. He finishes the regular season with 8 goals after averaging just 9:58 of ice time in 44 games.

Jaroslav Janus' season ended with a whimper as Slovan fell 3-2 to Zagreb. Ex-NHLer Jonathan Cheechoo assisted on the game-winning goal just 13 seconds into the final period of the match. It was Cheechoo's second helper of the game. Ex-Lightning defenseman Kurtis Foster also scored for Zagreb.

Here's how the KHL playoffs shape up for the Lightning's prospects:

In the Western Conference, Slovan Bratislava (Jaroslav Janus) finished 11th, 17 points out of the money and will not season the postseason.

In the Eastern Conference, the late season heroics of Vasily Koshechkin allowed Metallurg Magnitogorsk to clinch the 1st seed in the conference by 8 points over divisional rival Ak Bars Kazan. Theyll face 8th seed Vladivostok, which made the playoffs in their expansion season.

Ufa (Andrey Vasilevskiy) will get the test of being the 4th seed and will square off against 5th seed Novgorod. Both teams finished with 94 points, but Ufa got the tiebreak.

Like Bratislava, Khanty-Mansisysk (Nikita Gusev) finished 11th in their conference and will not make the KHL's postseason tournament. They finished 14 points behind Vladivostok for the final playoff spot in the East.

Make it back-to-back shutouts and back-to-back 1-0 wins for Vasily Koshechkin as he and Magnitogorsk defeated Kazan today 1-0. Czech forward Jan Kovar scored the game winner for Metallurg. Koshechkin is 5th in the KHL in save percentage and leads the pack in shutouts.

Yugra continued to look unimpressive emerging from the Olympics break as they were again crushed, this time by Mytischi by a score of 5-1. Ex-Lightning forward Evgeny Artyukhin had a helper in the win for Mytischi. Nikita Gusev played 17:50 in the loss.

Vasily Koshechkin was perfect, even stopping three of three in the penalty shot session, in Magnitogorsk's 1-0 win over Dynamo Moscow. Ex-Lightning draft pick Marek Kvapil was among the unlucky Dynamo shooters nullified by Koshechkin in the skills competition.

Only slightly less impressive than Koshechkin's shutout, Andrey Vasilevskiy turned aside all 23 shots he faced to deliver Ufa a 1-0 win over Kazan. Longtime KHL star Konstantin Barulin turned aside 27 shots at the other end of the ice for Kazan in defeat.